We went to the new Church History museum yesterday, and saw the winners of the contest “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.” My favorite painting was Brian Kershinik’s “Jesus and the Angry Babies,” because I have thought for a long time that the children sitting on His lap were likely wiggly and annoying and that is why the disciples wanted them taken away. He wasn’t holding perfect angels–they might have been snotty or poopy or whining, and yet he did not want them to leave.

And the other favorite–it has to be a tie, really, was one whose title and author I do not remember, but it was of the woman with an issue of blood who touched the Savior’s garment and was whole.

Looking at it I thought, for the first time, of that story as a metaphor for all women. She had an issue of blood–an eternal period–for 12 years, and the laws of her time meant that having an issue of blood caused her perpetual uncleanness. She couldn’t touch men, or sit where they sat. She was permanently exiled for being extremely female, for having the most female of problems.

The Savior healed her.

And sometimes I am frustrated because it’s hard to be a woman, to bear and bear with children, to have rules and laws and customs that bind you because of who you are. It can be hard to be a woman in the Church–although I have been blessed with good leaders, I know that many women have been hurt by customs, rules, thoughtlessness.

But looking at that painting, I thought this: the Savior was aware of her. She was hidden, or pushed away, the way so many women are, the way so many problems inherent to womanhood have been for centuries, and yet He healed her, and acknowledged her need for healing and her faith.

I think He sees all of us and He is absolutely willing to heal anything we bring to him in faith, any problem that comes from being a woman. In all their afflictions, he was afflicted–it is true of men, and true of women too.